Hacker Cinema
Police Squad!
1982 · TV series · 25 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams
In this cult parody of cop dramas, replete with farce and sight gags, Lieutenant Frank Drebin and his fellow officers from Police Squad bungle their way though crime investigations.
4 positive1 mixed4 neutralfrom 9 commenters
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12 comments on Hacker News
Not a movie, but Police Squad is missing from streaming services. It's strange given it spawned 3 movies and now we even have an upcoming sequel to those.
Apparently, David Zucker (of Airplane! and Police Academy!^W^W Police Squad! film-making fame) bought a race horse which he named "All Pink" and instructed the jockey to run the horse as close as possible to the inside rail. The intention was to cause the announcer to say some funny words:
> It was 1989 through 1993. Saratoga, NY, not Sarasota Fla. The goal was to get the track announcer to call out: "...and it's All Pink on the inside!" In fact, it took three horses over about four years. The first horse, "All Pink" ran on the inside, but never got the call. "Ol Pink" ran too close to the rail, and jumped it, ending up on the infield. Finally a mare, "Awl Pink" got the call in late '93. A $60,000 joke.
https://800poundgorillamedia.com/blogs/the-laugh-button/creators-airplane-pulled-off-one-funniest-jokes-weve-ever-heard
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/26/jim-abrahams-airplane-naked-gun
The Hollywood Reporter: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jim-abrahams-dead-airplane-naked-gun-hot-shots-1236071689/
Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/jim-abrahams-airplane-hot-shots-filmmaker-dead-1235182245/
The submitted seems to present misleading information about Police Squad!: all six episodes of the first series were released (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Squad! ). (The obituary from Variety says that the set will be enriched though: «Paramount is releasing a sequel [of The Naked Gun] in 2025, starring Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., directed by Akiva Schaffer and with a story by Seth MacFarlane».)
Edit: HN member Toomuchtodo suggests to consolidate the obituary information above with the general information on Jim Abrahams, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Abrahams
I looked into upscaling for the original episodes of Police Squad. Paid a good chunk of money for an AI upscaler because I was too curious how good of a job it could do.
The results were not great. When there's too many different things impacting the quality of the source, the AI just can't do a great job. In the case of Police Squad DVD rips, they were low res and noisy.
When I eventually found a higher resolution Bluray version, I ran that through just to denoise it and got much better results. My understanding is that it also would have been able to do a good job upscaling given a source that wasn't noisy.
Maybe you can use a chain of models to handle both problems. I didn't try anything like that. Though I would expect the tool to have that as an option if it is something that worked well.
Police Squad's a TV show, but if you like parodies and don't mind being force-feminized by a recent movie, check out Isn't It Romantic. Just don't tell the author it exists.
Aside note: since they have been less available to some, it is possible that some may have missed the Police Squad! (ZAZ 1982) series or The Kentucky Fried Movie (Landis 1977). I must recommend to those who only know the prominent works (Airplane!, Naked Gun etc.) to find and try the preparatory works.
He states that:
> Airplane! would probably not have been made, and Police Squad! (the ABC sitcom that was the root of the Naked Gun movies) would have been cancelled after two episodes instead of six
the idea of losing masterpieces is utterly, totally unacceptable. Masterpieces are irreplaceable.
Mad was great before it became Mad Magazine.
The first 23 issues were insane stream-of-consciousness comic books. Anything you liked about the the tv show Police Squad or the movies Airplane!, The Naked Gun, etc., was basically just early Mad. Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Basil Wolverton at his manic best. Legends.
The stuff you're talking about, the pure gags, the Spy vs. Spy... some of it was great, most of it was mediocre, but the main thing it did was let them make every magazine a digest. You could have a mix of new content and old every month.
I vividly remember buying a copy of Mad Magazine in the early 90's that included one of their moronic movie spoofs. You know, carnival-style big head caricatures, everybody just has a new name that's a poop joke?
In 1992, that spoof was of the movie Love Story, released in 1970. Half the jokes in the Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions at that time were about key parties and leisure suits.
That's why you perceived it as "old hippie humor from people who didn't understand social currents that arose since the 1960s, like video games and hip-hop... and didn't want to."
They were just reprinting old content with a little new stuff sprinkled in.
I just watched the Police Squad episodes a last month. I think they're very funny, but I must say the jokes become repetitious even within just 6 episodes.
I'm sure that style of humor allows more variety of jokes, but it seemed to me like that particular writing team reached its limits.
This sounds like the absolute perfect thing for me, and I'd never even heard of it!
Just a quick check, you've seen Police Squad, right? The precursor series to The Naked Gun. It's only 6 episodes, which always amazes me when I think of how many moments I love in it.
> It takes off where "The Naked Gun" left and adds more wordplay.
If you weren't already aware that The Naked Gun started as a TV show called Police Squad! and that it's exactly as great as you'd hope, congratulations because today is the day you get to learn about that.
FWIW I find IT Crowd funny, but it's not on my 'must have' list. - Office, Green wing, Alan Partridge, blackadder, brasseye, day today, extras, league of gentlemen, psychoville, police squad, 30 rock, etc would all be above it.
IT Crowd is great, but I wish it was a bit more cutting/daring rather than settling into a formulaic sitcom.